• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.4 no.2
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• pp.3-20
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• 2012

The purpose of this study was to investigate whether a segmentation unit for a Korean noun is a 'syllable' and whether the process of segmenting spoken words occurs at the lexical level. A syllable monitoring task was administered which required participants to detect an auditorily presented target from visually presented words. In Experiment 1, syllable neighborhood density of high frequency words which can be segmented into both CV-CVC and CVC-VC were controlled. The syllable effect and the neighborhood density effect were significant, and the syllable effect emerged differently depending on the syllable neighborhood density. Similar results were obtained in Experiment 2 where low frequency words were used. The significance of word frequency effect on syllable effect was also examined. The results of Experiments 1 and 2 indicated that the segmentation unit for a Korean noun is indeed a 'syllable', and this process can occur at the lexical level.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.1 no.2
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• pp.129-140
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• 2009

The purpose of the present study is to investigate frequency related information and syllable structure constraints on Sino-Korean. Previous studies on Sino-Korean have mostly investigated the historical change of sounds and reviewed archaic features of Chinese language in Sino-Korean. Unfortunately, there is little study on the sounds of contemporary Sino-Korean in terms of syllable structure constraints. For the purpose of the present study, sounds of 7,742 Chinese characters used in Sino-Korean (7,795 syllables) were investigated and syllable matrices made based on the results of frequency related information. As a result, 483 syllable types were observed and the most frequently observed syllables were as follows: /ku/ (103) > /ki/ (100) > /ju/ (87) > /pi/ (86). Only 16 out of 19 consonants are used for Sino-Korean. /$t^{\ast}$/ and /$p^{\ast}$/ are never used in Sino-Korean and /kh, $s^{\ast}$, $k^{\ast}$/ occur only a few times (3, 2, 1 respectively). /k/ (17.5%) shows the highest frequency and /n, ${\eta}$, 1, tc, m/ occupied the next rankings. Among 20 vowel types, /a/ showed the highest frequency and /o, u, i, $j{\Lambda}$, ${\Lambda}$/ occupied the next rankings. Based on the syllable matrices, gaps were observed and classified into accidental or systematic ones. Onset and nucleus, nucleus and coda, onset and coda, and other syllable structure constraints of Sino-Korean were listed.

• The KIPS Transactions:PartB
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• v.11B no.1
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• pp.99-106
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• 2004

The syllable restoration is a process restoring a phonetic value recognized in a speech recognition device with the notation form that a vocalization is former. In this paper a syllable restoration rule was composed of a based on standard pronunciation for a syllable restoration process. A syllable restoring regulation was used, and a generation method of a notation candidate set was researched. Also, A study is held to reduce the number of created notation candidate. Three phases of reduction processes were suggested. Reduction of a notation candidate has the non-notation syllable, non-vocabulary syllable and non-stem syllable. As a result of experiment, an average of 74％ notation candidate decrease rates were shown.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.23-27
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• 2003

Recently attempts to we the syllable as the recognition unit to enhance performance in continuous speech recognition hate been reported. However, syllables are worse in their trainability than phones and the former have a disadvantage in that contort-dependent modeling is difficult across the syllable boundary since the number of models is much larger for syllables than for phones. In this paper, we propose a method to enhance the trainability for the syllables in Korean and phoneme-context dependent syllable modeling across the syllable boundary. An experiment in which the proposed method is applied to word recognition shows average 46.23% error reduction in comparison with the common syllable modeling. The right phone dependent syllable model showed 16.7% error reduction compared with a triphone model.

• MALSORI
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• no.21_24
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• pp.43-89
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• 1992

In this thesis, the prominent aspect of word accent in standard Korean is studied by auditory test and acoustic analysis experiment. The definition of 'accent' is, following Hoyoung Lee's discussion(1990), to be described as 'the means whereby a focused part of an utterance is made to stand out in order to concentrate the hearer's attention on it.' That is to say, the ten of 'accent' may be described in terms of phonological phenomenon and the accented syllable can be phonetically prominent as the result of those phonological process. Prosodic features may have different characteristics in different languages whether they contain linguistically important functions or not. Thus the characteristics of word accent in standard Korean will be determined as the content and trait of prosodic features. Following this viewpoint, present study looked over prosodic features which may effect the characteristics of word accent in standard Korean, through systematic experimental procedure. And the result of this experiment has been verified by statistical method, the T-test, for the purpose of identifying the relatedness among prosodic features(parameters). This thesis, therefore, aimed to investigate the intrinsic acoustic and physical qualities of the word accent in standard Korean. Nonsense words composed by 'mal' and 'ma' which can be divided into 'heavy syllable' and 'light syllable' quoted from Hyman(1975) have been classified into 28 types with respect to syllable numbers(2 syl., 3 sy1., 4 syl.) and these words have become the target of auditory test and acoustic experiment. As the result of those experimental Procedures, the word accent in standard Korean may be said that it has a tendency of fixing first two syllables regardless of syllable numbers. The syllable types of HH, HL, LL in the first two syllables may be prominent at first syllable and the type of H may be at second syllable. Various prosodic features(parameters) including duration, intensity, and Fo(purely phonetic terms) were also strengthened in those positions. The result of this experiment can be cleared up like these : 1. The most important feature is proved as 'duration', the feature of intensity resulted in more subsidiary one than the feature of duration. 2. Fo( fundamental frequency) could be observed as having some coherent contour through almost all syllable types(99 ％), that is, in 2 syllable types, it had rising contour, in 2 syllable types, rising-falling contour, and in 4 syllable types, it contained rising-falling-rising contour. The result of auditory test was different with those contour forms of all Fo surveyed. With respect to these results, the discuss for Fo is determined' to be excluded comparing other features. 3. Finally, this thesis resulted in a decision that the word accent in standard Korean may has fixed(somewhat weaker) accent, especially fixed at first two syllables in almost all words. 4. Various kinds of syllable types related with 2,3,4 syllables, therefore, can be reclassified into 4 types of HH, HL, LH, LL following the concept of accent fixing placement(i.e. first two syllables). In these 4 types, the types of HH, HL, LL were prominent at the position of the first syllable , and the type of LH was prominent at the second syllable otherwise.

• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
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• 1996.10a
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• pp.207-207
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• 1996

The neutral tone is one of the most important distinguishing features in Beijing Mandarin, but there are two completely different views on its linguistic function: a special tone(Xu, 1980) versus weak stress(Chao, 1968). In this paper, the acoustic manifestation of the neutral tone will be explored to show that it is closely related to weak stress. 122 disyllabic words in which the second syllable carries the neutral tone, including 22 stress pairs, were uttered by a native male speaker of Beijing dialect and analysed by Kay Digital Sonagraph 5500-1. The results of the acoustic analysis are presented as follows: 1) The first two formants of the medial and the syllabic vowel moves towards that of central vowel with a greater magnitude in the syllable with the neutral tone than in the syllable with any of the four normal tones. Also the vowel ending, and nasal coda /n/ and / / in the syllable with the neutral tone tends to be deleted. 2) In the syllables with the neutral tone, there are strong carryover coarticulations between the medial and syllabic vowel and the preceding unvoiced consonant. In general, the vowel is affected to move towards the position of the central vowel with more greater magnitude by coronal consonant than by labial or velar consonant. 3) In the syllable with the neutral tone, when and only when it precedes a syllable with tone-4, the high vowel following [f], [ts'], [s], [ts'], [s], [tc'] or [c] tends to be voiceless. 4) It can be seen from the acoustical results of 22 stress pairs that the duration of the syllable with the neutral tone is on the average reduced to 55% of that of the syllable with the four normal tones, and the duration of the final in the syllable with neutral tone is on the average reduced to 45% of that of the final in the syllable with the four normal tones(Lin & Yan 1980). 5) The FO contour of the neutral tone is highly dependent on the preceding normal tone(Lin & Yan 1993). For a number of languages it has been found that the vowel space is reduced as the level of stress placed upon the vowel is reduced(Nord 1986). Therefore we reach the conclusion that the syllable with neutral tone is related to weak stress(Lin & Yan 1990). The neutral tone is not a special tone because the preceding normal tone.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• no.1
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• pp.21-42
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• 1995

The purpose of this study is to point out that the segment-based study on child phonological acquisition is not sufficient in accounting for the ever-changing dynamic development of child phonology and to attempt to explain child phonology in terms of syllable-based theory of phonology, one of various types of non -linear phonology which have been studied since the late 1970's. According to Gruber's observation. it is obvious that children perceive their own concept of syllable even at the early stage of babbling. In addition, the statistical data show that the CV-type syllable is most frequently used in child phonology. These evidences seem to suffice to conclude that the CV-type syllable is the most unmarked of all four core syllable types in the sense of Clements & Keyser(1983). Starting with this observation, it is further argued that in child phonology the markedness of syllable types increases in the order of CV, CVC, VC and V.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.237-248
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• 2003

This paper compares the syllable structure of French and Korean analyzing the speech data of these two languages recorded during the actual speech. Reference to the syllable structure of French is made from F. Wioland's research data. As for the Korean data, the primary data are drawn from the 30-minute radio interview in which two male TV anchors in their early 60s talk to each other. The secondary source of the data is collected by having the primary data replicated by the two male announcers in their early 20's broadcasting in the university ra야o station of KAIST. With reference to the data collected in French and Korean, this paper provides the statistical frequency of each type of syllable structure in each language through the acoustic analysis of the spectrograms and renders a phonetic account of the characteristics of each syllable type in the two languages. Also discussed in this paper is the distributional condition in which each syllable structure is laid out in the speech context.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.127-140
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• 2006

This study examined acoustic characteristics of 900 CV syllables produced by five English native speakers. Those target syllables were produced between the syllable /ba/ twenty times. The syllables were segmented and normalized by the maximum intensity value of each syllable and were divided into consonant or vowel sections by a few visible acoustic criteria. Intensity values were collected at 100 relative time points per syllable. Also, cumulative intensity values and consonant and vowel durations along with the ratio of a consonant to each syllable were measured using Praat scripts. Results showed as follows: Firstly, the consonantal section amounted to a quarter of the syllable in terms of both the cumulative intensity and duration. Secondly, the consonantal ratio by the cumulative intensity was similar to that by the duration. Finally, the sum of the cumulative intensity values in each syllable partially coincided with the consonant order by the current sonority scale. Further studies would be desirable on more reliable acoustical measurements and sophisticated perceptual experiments on the English syllables.

• MALSORI
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• no.25_26
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• pp.65-92
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• 1993

Not all linguistic units are of equal importance in the functioning of language. The present study aims to examine He functional load of phonemes in standard Korean, To achieve this goal, B analysed continuous texts selected from the textbooks of elementary school on a personal computer. The total number of syllables studied in this thesis is 101,637. The characteristics of the Korean syllable structures are as follows. 1) In a syllable head, /n/ occurs most frequently. 2) The frequencies of syllables with an onset are much higher than those with no onset ( 85% : 15% ), 3) In a syllable head, obstruents are preferred because their consonantal strength are great, (57%) 4) In a syllable nucleus, /a/ occurs most frequently. 5) The rate of occurrence of the monophthongs is 90.2%, and that of the diphthongs is 9.8%. Especially the three basic vowels(/i,a,u/) occur at the rate of 46.6%. 6) In a syllable coda, /n/ occurs most frequently. 7) The open syllables are favored (open syllable 68.7%, closed syllable 31.3%).